"Can I ask you something honest?" Danica says, and I reluctantly look up at her. "What do you think made him like you?"
My throat dries, and I shake my head. "I don't know."
"Come on, you have to have some idea," Danica persists. "I'm guessing he liked the whole ‘nice girl' thing, but do you also think he found you attractive?" Her gaze skips to my crazy hair for just a second before resting on my face.
"I really don't know."
My cousin sighs. "Can you come shopping with me tonight? I need to get a new number, and I want to look for an outfit that will make him remember why he fell for me in the first place." She lowers one finished foot and concentrates on the other. "I was too busy obsessing over the band's music video, and I think he felt neglected. And then you showed up with that damn care basket, and-" She dismisses the past with a wave of her hand. "I just need to make him remember why he loves me."
"I'm heading to the shelter at three," I tell her, thanking God that I keep a busy schedule.
"Then tomorrow?"
"I-"
"Look, Hailey," Danica interrupts, pausing her toenail painting to level me with her stare. "I'm going to be really honest with you, okay? We both know I only moved to this town because I wanted to get back with Mike. You know that, I know that . . . My parents probably even know that too, but they're willing to ignore it as long as I stay in school. But the thing is, if I'm not with Mike, I don't want to stay in school. There's no reason for me to stay in this stupid town."
She lets that sink in before she continues, and I know where she's going even before she goes there.
"And we also both know why my dad jumped at the chance to pay for you to come here too. He thinks you'll help keep me in line, be a positive influence. You're here to babysit me, Hailey, but if I'm not here, there's no reason for you to be here either."
That suffocating blanket over my face grows heavier and thicker and hotter.
"I'm not blackmailing you into helping me, Hailey. I'm just telling the truth." She swipes the tiny brush over her little toe while I tumble over Niagara, entombed in my blanket. "So will you go shopping with me tomorrow?"
"I guess I have no choice."
When Mike calls me an hour later, it's one o'clock in the morning in Beijing. I pick up the phone, still trying to recover from my talk with Danica, and I spend the first few minutes of the call barely saying a word.
"Can I ask you something?" I cut in at a random point in the conversation. I'm not even sure what he was saying, since I was too busy replaying my conversation with Danica in my head.
"What is it?"
I take a steadying breath and release my lip from between my teeth. "When you realized you had feelings for me, were you still . . . did you and Danica . . . were you two still-"
I'm stuttering over my words, trying to hold together the pieces of my own fractured heart, when Mike says, "Whoa. Whoa. Hailey, no. I would never-"
"But Danica said-"
"Said what?" Mike scoffs. "Haven't you learned you can't trust a word that comes out of her mouth?"
"She said you fell for me when you were sleeping with her," I finish, and Mike growls into the phone.
"She just won't ever fucking stop, will she?"
My end of the phone remains silent as I squeeze my lip between my fingers at the far corner of my room. I'm sitting on a bed pillow on the floor with my head against the wall and a vise around my heart.
"Hailey," Mike says, "Danica and I only slept together one time since she came back around. The night you waited outside my tour bus, that was the only time. It's part of why she's been so pissed off at me all the time, because I wouldn't do it again. It just didn't feel right. Even that night, it felt so wrong-"
"Then why did you do it?"
Mike sighs. "I didn't even feel like I was in my own body that night. I'd spent years thinking about this girl I loved, and then there she was, and she just kept throwing herself at me, and-it was fucking stupid. It was so fucking stupid. Even when I was doing it, I couldn't look at her. I had to-" Mike abruptly stops, his voice pained. "You don't want to hear this."
"I need to," I tell him, and it's the truth. Danica's words are a ghost that will haunt me if I don't pull the floating sheet away from them.
"I couldn't even look her in the eye, Hailey. I flipped her over and took her from behind, and afterward, I felt fucking sick. She fell asleep, and I just felt so wrong. I was so confused. When you asked about her later, I told you she'd probably be sleeping a while, but really, I just didn't want you to wake her up. I couldn't even think straight."
"Why did you date her?" I ask.
"I don't know," Mike says, and even though I'm hurting, the sadness in his voice makes me want to reach out across thousands and thousands of miles just to hold him. "Stupid reasons. I felt like I needed to see if my feelings would come back. And I felt guilty about what we'd done on the bus . . . I'm not a one-night-stand kind of guy, Hailey. I felt guilty, like I owed it to her to at least give us a chance."
I stop punishing my lip, surprised by the easy way his words comfort me. I knew he slept with Danica that night, and while I had thought the details would hurt me, they're cool relief over my skin. And when Mike tells me he felt like he owed Danica because of the mistake he made that night-I don't know why that makes me want to hug him, but it does.
"I love you," I say, and my heart slams against my ribs. My eyes widen when I realize what I just said, and I hold my breath, curl my toes, squeeze my fingers-
"Say that again," Mike says, and the gentle need in his voice pulls the words from my mouth.
"I love you," I repeat, releasing the death grip I have on my own fingers. I uncoil them from one another and try to breathe evenly, try not to panic, try not to have a heart attack. The line is quiet for so long that my anxiety kicks back up. "Hello?"
"I want to be with you so badly right now," Mike says. "I want to kiss you and spin you around and be inside you-"
A nervous giggle bubbles out of me, and Mike growls, "Fuck, I want to be inside you."
Heat sparks over my skin, and I blush furiously in my dimly lit room. "I miss you," I whisper, hearing the lust in my own voice.
Mike groans. "Jesus."
Spurred on by his hungry tone, my inner vixen reemerges, and she's wearing a bloodred dress. "Do you miss me, Mike?"
"Hailey," he warns. "I'm standing in the corner of a greenroom filled with people right now."
"Which parts do you miss the most?" I purr, and when he curses into the phone, I can't help laughing.
"You're going to find out when I come home in five weeks, baby," Mike promises, his filthy tone sparking over my flesh.
His promise keeps me awake that night as anticipation and fear prickle over my skin. I lie in the dark, thinking, Five weeks until I can lose myself in his arms again.
Five weeks until I could lose it all.
Chapter 39
"Which color?" Danica asks, holding up two dresses worth more than my left leg-one teal, one bloodred.
"The left," I say, indicating the teal one as I stand with my back against one of the marble pillars inside a high-end retail store in our town shopping center. The judgmental looks the salespeople gave me as I walked inside the store made it very clear that they don't believe I belong here, and they're right. One look at a price tag, and I tucked my hands inside my pockets to keep from accidentally touching anything else. With my luck, it would end up smelling like dog, and I'd have to sell my soul to Danica to buy the damaged goods.
Danica ponders my suggestion for a moment, looking at both of the dresses. "Mike has always loved me in red though . . ." She giggles and hangs the teal dress back up on the wall. "My cheerleading uniform was red, and you should've seen the way he'd watch me at football games, Hail. I think that uniform was the only reason he bothered coming."
She smiles as she continues strolling around the store, and I consider stabbing out my eardrums with a clothes hanger as I follow.
Before we got here, she told me that she plans to find a few sexy outfits for a video message she's recording for Mike in a few days, one that she believes will make him take her back. And then she's going to send it to him-to my boyfriend.